Rally caps

Nick Kohler rightly notes that Canada currently doesn't have anywhere near the type of political rallies which the Obama campaign has been able to generate. But I have to wonder whether the theories presented as to why reflect a classic case of failing to question flawed conventional wisdom:

Tory MP Jason Kenney says the main reason is because crowd-manufacturing takes work, and our political types have decided it's not worth the hassle. "I think they're of limited utility," he says. "A lot of parties in Canada concluded they don't get much bang for the buck in terms of allocating scarce resources." Nor does the landscape encourage American-style rah-rah-rah. "Where would you go other than an arena in Canada — and if it's winter, where do you go unless it's a covered arena?" asks Liberal MP Joe Volpe. "You can count those on one hand and they're thousands of kilometres apart."

Elections are shorter in Canada, too, so events must be planned just days in advance. And while Volpe argues that large turnouts in the U.S. indicate a certain je ne sais quoi quality to Obama, others attribute them to massive election budgets. Our campaign finance laws discourage monster events, one Tory says, adding his party couldn't afford the $200,000 price tag attached to big rallies, given a budget of $18 million and a travel itinerary that costs $5 million. "Obama has an unlimited budget, so they can finance the advertising and venues and mailings it takes to organize something like that — these things don't happen spontaneously," says Kenney.

Friction between local candidates and the national parties in Canada can also rule out big crowds. Simple door-knocking is more likely to win an MP's seat than an appearance on TV with Steve or Stéphane. "In the U.S., you're not commanding all the people organizing the congressional campaigns to turn people out — they're different operations," says Liberal organizer Mark Marissen. "The people you call [here] are all in the riding campaigns — and they groan."

From what I can tell, the above includes a lot more excuse-making than genuine strategic thought.

Let's start first with the issue about the cost of a rally. While it's true that parties operate under a spending cap during campaign periods, there's nothing at all preventing them from holding events outside a campaign. And indeed, to the extent a party is able to both seek donations at an event and generate added enthusiasm to boost its volunteering and fund-raising capacity, it would seem qusetionable to consider rallies as pure costs rather than opportunities to boost a party's bottom line in the long run.

Now, that might well make for a genuine question of strategy. But it would seem to me to be one where the reward of getting thousands of people excited about one's party far exceeds the cost of a rally.

And that goes doubly during the course of a campaign, particularly when compared to the other possible uses of money. Sure, the cost of three or four large rallies could be spent putting a party's ads in slightly heavier rotation. But particularly given the ad saturation that tends to take place during a campaign, isn't it highly likely that a few well-televised rallies which show genuine widespread public support for a party would do far more to build the party's image than merely putting its top-down message in front of viewers a few more times? (And that's beyond the obvious person-to-person effect generated by those who actually attend the rallies.)

Finally, there's the question of whether riding associations will want to play along. But there too, the answer would seem to be an obvious "yes" if a party can actually generate an enthusiastic public response. Indeed, the attendees at a rally presumably reflect exactly the people which a riding association will want to add to its contact lists and get involved in the party going forward. And the process of holding a rally might make for the best opportunity to add them to the fold.

Of course, it's true that rallies would figure to be a relatively late step in building a party: it would indeed be impossible to assemble an Obama-style crowd without a substantial amount of behind-the-scenes work already being done. But if Canada's political parties aren't now capable of attracting large crowds, that seems to me to say more about their failure to fully engage the public than any limitation of rallies as a concept - and may signal that the first party to assemble the kind of movement which can pack arenas across the country will be the one best positioned to end the current political malaise.

(Edit: fixed typo.)